How Hairspray’s Nikki Blonsky Got the Gig

In this week’s special 2007 Summer Guide, Logan Hill talks to young Hairspray star Nikki Blonsky about how the studio told her she’d landed the role (as depicted in the video above):

They claimed it was for a DVD extra; in fact, it was a publicity stunt, staged for Entertainment Tonight. “Next thing I know, I was serving ice cream to New Line executives without knowing it,” she says. “They turned on a laptop at a table and [a video clip of director] Adam Shankman came on saying, ‘I think you should make yourself a big ice-cream cone because you’re going to be playing Tracy Turnblad in the new Hairspray movie!’”

Then Blonsky reacts like any senior in high school would and totally loses it. Adorably.

And just to up the “Aw!” factor, Hill points us to this quote from a 2002 Newsday article about ice-skating star Sarah Hughes, in which a 13-year-old Blonsky effuses about the hometown ice-skating hero (they’re both from Great Neck): “She’s so young and she’s so talented,” said Nikki Blonsky, 13, of Great Neck. “It shows us that a hometown girl can make it if she just works hard.” Indeed.